Help Cracked/Dead screen! Can anything be done?

[thenrik]

Hi all, I've recently had the terrible misfortune of having dropped my phone, so now the screen is physically cracked and no longer functioning (no display, no touch screen response) however the phone still turns on and I believe I can get it into download mode.

Thankfully, the phone was insured, but as misfortune would have it, I neglected to back up any data after I got my first Galaxy, so I now currently have 2 galaxy s2 phones, and I was wondering if there was anything that could be done about transferring the data off the first into the second?

Any suggestion is welcome at this point barring taking the phone apart

 

[Burzum]

It might be lupus.

Have you tried rooting it?

 

[thenrik]

It might be lupus.

Have you tried rooting it?

Pretty sure it isn't lupus doctor house.

that's at I haven't tried rooting it yet, I'm not particularly experienced with rooting so I'm not sure if after rooting the phone with the dead screen whether I'll be able to transfer the data after it's rooted with no touch screen

 

[rounsy222]

Pretty sure it isn't lupus doctor house.

that's at I haven't tried rooting it yet, I'm not particularly experienced with rooting so I'm not sure if after rooting the phone with the dead screen whether I'll be able to transfer the data after it's rooted with no touch screen

Ignore the troll. Really your options are very limited unfortunately. Your contacts should be backed up automatically as long as you didnt purposely save them to your phone vs your Gmail account. Depending on app some save to SD card and not your phone storage. Anything that was on your external SD card will be there. Could always bring it to a sprint store and see what they can transfer over from your broken phone. Good luck, I feel for you.

 

[thenrik]

Really your options are very limited unfortunately. Your contacts should be backed up automatically as long as you didnt purposely save them to your phone vs your Gmail account. Depending on app some save to SD card and not your phone storage. Anything that was on your external SD card will be there. Could always bring it to a sprint store and see what they can transfer over from your broken phone. Good luck, I feel for you.

Thanks for the response

And yes, my contacts are fine.

Unfortunately I tried bringing it to both a sprint store and a best buy, and they couldn't get the phone to talk to the machine, so to speak.

The guy at the sprint store indicated it might have needed to have some setting activated (I assume they might mean developer mode for debug) but that is probably no longer an option given that we cannot use the touch screen to navigate (perhaps the one sad thing about not having many physical buttons)

At this point I imagine among the few options left to me is possibly rooting the phone (As I mentioned I can get it into download mode since the buttons still work) or possibly running command lines, but I have no experience with that and have only seen a few demonstrations on youtube of people rooting their phones


Any advice on where to look would be greatly appreciated

 

[rounsy222]

Thanks for the response

And yes, my contacts are fine.

Unfortunately I tried bringing it to both a sprint store and a best buy, and they couldn't get the phone to talk to the machine, so to speak.

The guy at the sprint store indicated it might have needed to have some setting activated (I assume they might mean developer mode for debug) but that is probably no longer an option given that we cannot use the touch screen to navigate (perhaps the one sad thing about not having many physical buttons)

At this point I imagine among the few options left to me is possibly rooting the phone (As I mentioned I can get it into download mode since the buttons still work) or possibly running command lines, but I have no experience with that and have only seen a few demonstrations on youtube of people rooting their phones


Any advice on where to look would be greatly appreciated

If sprint cant access it using their setup then things get really limited.rooting and then possibly using adb shell (command lines) might work, never done it either. Hope it works out for you. Let me know if there is anything else and I will keep an eye out for you as well. Good luck!!

 

[KitsapAndroid]

I'm a little confused by your post. What exactly are you trying to get on your new phone? Your contacts are backed up via your gmail. Your apps are all saved on the "my apps" part of the Play Store. The only thing I could see is if you still had your pictures saving to the phone, and not your SD card. Then you would lose your pics, unless of course you have google+ with instant upload enabled, or if you have picasa synced with your phone. Then your pics are there as well. So what exactly are you trying to recover that you need the touchscreen on the old phone to work?

 

[thenrik]

I'm a little confused by your post. What exactly are you trying to get on your new phone? Your contacts are backed up via your gmail. Your apps are all saved on the "my apps" part of the Play Store. The only thing I could see is if you still had your pictures saving to the phone, and not your SD card. Then you would lose your pics, unless of course you have google+ with instant upload enabled, or if you have picasa synced with your phone. Then your pics are there as well. So what exactly are you trying to recover that you need the touchscreen on the old phone to work?

There's more than just pictures, contacts, and apps. There's application data, text messages, voice mail, and other small things like playlists made on the phone that I would like to have back if possible.

That said, I may try putting the phone into recovery/download mode and going back to the sprint/bestbuy to see if that'll make the phone talk, but otherwise it seems like rooting is the only thing I can do, and after reading the sticky above, it seems that overwriting the OS is a bad idea since I have the sprint model of the phone, which may cause it to become bricked since it's not the international model.

Anyone else have ideas, or suggestions?

 

[KitsapAndroid]

There's more than just pictures, contacts, and apps. There's application data, text messages, voice mail, and other small things like playlists made on the phone that I would like to have back if possible.

That said, I may try putting the phone into recovery/download mode and going back to the sprint/bestbuy to see if that'll make the phone talk, but otherwise it seems like rooting is the only thing I can do, and after reading the sticky above, it seems that overwriting the OS is a bad idea since I have the sprint model of the phone, which may cause it to become bricked since it's not the international model.

Anyone else have ideas, or suggestions?

Application data will never be transfered without root afaik. The most reliable way I know is to use Titanium Backup, which requires root. Text messages can be recovered if you use an app like SMS Backup, which has an option to backup your texts to your gmail. Your VM is through Sprint, not through the phone, so it's always there. Your playlist may be able to backed up via USB, but that also may require the screen to work. Wasn't trying to be a jerk, just trying to figure out exactly what you were hoping to back up/transfer.

 

[thenrik]

Application data will never be transfered without root afaik. The most reliable way I know is to use Titanium Backup, which requires root. Text messages can be recovered if you use an app like SMS Backup, which has an option to backup your texts to your gmail. Your VM is through Sprint, not through the phone, so it's always there. Your playlist may be able to backed up via USB, but that also may require the screen to work. Wasn't trying to be a jerk, just trying to figure out exactly what you were hoping to back up/transfer.

I didn't think you were trying to be hostile, so no harm done.

That said while my voicemails are all on sprints servers, it only downloads to my phone when I get a new one, meaning to access my many older voicemails I have to dial 1, and that would be a painful experience to say the least. :stickyman:


As for application data and settings, I mentioned in my opening post I foolishly did not have the foresight to use a program like sprite backup to make a back up on my sd card (unless of course I can get titanium to run without the touchscreen).

That said, in playing with my new phone it seems that I've discovered something different between them. When I plug it into a usb on the new phone it asks for confirmation before going into mass storage, while my older phone would do so automatically.

Which leads me to a daring proposition...

Can I copy the contents of the directory known as "phone" from one phone to the next?

I'll admit not only does it sound like something with potentially disastrous outcome, but at this point I'm sort of getting towards the end of my rope...

 

[KitsapAndroid]

Can I copy the contents of the directory known as "phone" from one phone to the next?

MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR CURRENT "PHONE" DIRECTORY FIRST. Then have at it. If it doesn't work, then you can put the backed up file back in place.

 

[thenrik]

MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR CURRENT "PHONE" DIRECTORY FIRST. Then have at it. If it doesn't work, then you can put the backed up file back in place.

Well I just tried it and it didn't exactly seem to do anything. Evidently the place where certain data is stored is not directly accessible via the phone directory, and only certain data is stored there. When I replaced the data one of my apps ceased to work, but it wasn't of any importance. The main thing is that not much happened, which is both a relief and a disappointment.

That said, I'm going to look into more exotic means of recovering my data since not much else seems to be working =/


If anyone can help me find resources for this sort of thing I would be greatly appreciative

 

[thenrik]

Application data will never be transfered without root afaik. The most reliable way I know is to use Titanium Backup, which requires root.

It looks like I'll be trying to go for the root. It sounds like titanium backup may do the trick, but without the touchscreen I'm a little concerned, but I'm looking into trying this now. If you have any advice or tips please either post them here or in another thread I made

 

[thenrik]

Hey there everyone. So I managed to most of the data I wanted back without rooting the phone. As I was looking up information on how to root the phone, I downloaded Samsung Kies, (which seems to be the first step in rooting instructions.) I was able to back up most of the information I wanted, even with the cracked screen, without needing to root. I just successfully restored the information to my replacement phone.

Not all of the application data was recognized by their respective apps (which is to be expected without root.) I needed only to re-initialize the downloader.

Voicemail didn't transfer but I can always download that from sprint.

Overall I wouldn't call it a complete success but it was good enough.

I would recommend Samsung phone users give Keis a try.

Thanks for all of your help!